2016 Weingut Kruger-Rumpf, Scheurebe Spatlese, Nahe Germany.
What a gorgeous and sexy wine with an underlying exotic nature, but also extremely well balanced and structured from the Munsterer Dautenflanzer Grand Cru site with slate and sandy top soil, the Kruger-Rumpf Scheurebe Spatlese 2016 delivers an array of fruit, spice and lifting acidity. Fruity and flowery this vintage shows fleshing summer melon, lemon/lime, passion fruit and nectarine as well as wet rock, minty herb, flinty mineral spices and distilled jasmine and plumeria/hibiscus. Delicately sweet and lush on the medium weight palate, this Scheurebe is wonderfully seductive, though not cloying or honeyed, it feels drier and more crisp than you’d expect from a Spatlese highlighting the vintage and allowing flexibility in cuisine choices, seriously this lovely and lacy wine is less sugary than most Pinot Grigio(s), Gewürztraminer(s) and Muscat(s) no question, and it’s brilliant with Asian spicy foods, plus it does have good extract and stays firmly focused throughout. I was in the Nahe around harvest time last fall and tasted Scheurebe with Georg Rumpf in the vineyard, so I was thrilled to taste the finished wine, especially as it lived up to my expectations in every way, this 2016 is stunningly stylish, maybe less flamboyant than the 2015, but every bit as delicious, drink over the next 5 to 10 years.
($25 Est.) 93+ Points, grapelive